The Department of Family and Community Medicine’s Comprehensive Urban Underserved and Rural Experience program, or CU2RE, has been awarded supplemental funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration for the second year in a row, with new funding totaling $5.5 million.
The program began in 2020 with a $7 million HRSA award supporting its mission to enhance the recruitment, training and retention of medical students dedicated to providing primary care in rural and urban underserved areas, especially in Alabama. An additional $5.2 million in supplemental funding boosted the program in 2021, plus this recent award brings the funding total to $17.7 million.
The CU2RE program has grown rapidly since its launch in 2020. Its medical student program grew from an inaugural cohort of eight students to a second cohort of 14 students including students from all of UAB’s regional campuses. Applications for the third cohort, which will begin the program in January, are now open to first-year Heersink School of Medicine students. These students benefit from early clinical experiences, one-on-one mentorship with primary care faculty, an immersive summer program with stipend support, hands-on procedures workshops, discussions focused on leadership, cultural competency and other skills, primary care research opportunities and much more. (Read more about the CU2RE program’s impact on medical students here.)
The program has also added a CU2RE pipeline program for college students interested in practicing primary care in underserved areas. That program launched this summer, welcoming 12 students from five Alabama universities. Those students have already benefited from in-person and online workshops and discussion sessions, a tour of UAB medical facilities, discussions with faculty members and events with medical students in the CU2RE program.
In addition to programming for students, the CU2RE program supports training and practice transformation efforts for faculty members and clinicians as well as research efforts that bridge education and clinical practice, tackling some of Alabama’s toughest health care challenges.
Among other things, the new HRSA supplemental funding will be used to increase educational activities for medical students, redesign family medicine education across all UAB regional campuses, provide students with stipends to offset medical education costs and implement new faculty, staff and student development initiatives.
“It has been so exciting to watch the CU2RE program grow since its launch and the new supplemental funding from HRSA will give us even more opportunities to expand the program’s impact,” said Irfan Asif, M.D., department chair and associate dean for primary care and rural health. “Growing and enhancing primary care in Alabama is an important health care priority for the state, and I am thankful for HRSA’s investment in our efforts and our future physicians.”